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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25930468">Metamorphosis</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AssyEr/pseuds/AssyEr'>AssyEr</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Mechanisms (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Eldritch, Gen, How Do I Tag, Hurt, Lyf survives and drifts on his ship, Tags Are Hard, Yog-Sothoth - Freeform, barely comfort tbh, no beta we die like men, the relationships are barely there and almost non descripted</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 05:00:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,172</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25930468</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AssyEr/pseuds/AssyEr</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Lyf escapes Yggdrasil. They do not escape its consequences.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Writer's Month 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Metamorphosis</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>written for writer's month, prompt metamorphosis.</p><p>This was supposed to get out yesterday (or the day before i guess, looking at the clock) but I stayed up until six to finish it, and apparently forgot to post it. Yey.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>When they opened the first drawer on their desk, they found it. A small chaplet, two or three branches wide of mistletoe with most of its leaves plucked, so the flowers there stood out in a delicate interlaced. Purple, all of them, which made Lyf heart quicken in a not totally unwelcome way. They passed their fingers over them, appreciating the smooth texture of the petals.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Upon closer inspection, they realized that there were three different types of flowers. Bellflowers, they recognized for its peculiar form. Fewer, but equally stunting dwarf iris were more distributed along the curves. Liars were weaved along the branches, poking out between leaves.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They took it to their face and smelled it. The flowers were still fresh, despite the time they spent enclosed on the small space. A sneezed came out from them, and they finally smiled. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>It had been a long time since they had been given a flower chaplet for the festivities, specially a purple one. They petted the leaves as they sat down on the chair, thinking on who could have thought of giving them one. They had to have access to their office (tough that didn’t narrow it down that much. Gaund, the man who was in charge of cleaning the station, was a hopeless romantic and capable of opening the door to anyone with a chaplet like that), or at least know where they worked.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lyf didn’t know that many people who fitted the description (he didn’t know many people, period), and those who they did wouldn’t do something like this. Maybe some stranger from the office?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They subconsciously looked around, tough they didn’t saw anyone. Of course they didn’t, they were the only one that came in this early to work. He went back to the flowers, lost in thought.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The festivity was already over, so they technically couldn’t wear it. But they wanted to do something to show whoever had sent them the offer that it was appreciated. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>They took a mirror from their bag, and put it on the desk, facing themself. They had thicker braids today than normal, and perhaps they could make it work, tough it would be a shame to break it…</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They wouldn’t take many, they decided. Enough to show them off, but not that it tainted the beauty of the chaplet. Just some petals here, a leave there. They could not take any branch, or the thing would collapse, but they made do with some office clips.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lyf looked at themself on the mirror, and smiled.</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>There was something wrong with them.</p><p>They couldn’t open their eyes. When they did, they saw too many things dancing in front of them. The shadows of the room seemed to stir, hove, circle them all around as if waiting for an ambush, all without really moving. They stood static and shifted. They were there and beyond, and above and below them and <em>It wanted inside</em>.</p><p>Every dark corner looked to them now like a curtain or a veil, something very thin that hide those things behind. No, not just those things. Everything. It</p><p>They didn’t thought about it. Thinking meant letting It inside, and they couldn’t do that.</p><p>But It tried. It tried so, so hard.</p><p>It started small. Some swirls on the corner of their eyes, complete dark things that seemed not so dark. Shadows that almost glowed with colors, but no other than black present. Simple things that they could blame to paranoia, to stress, to trauma. Truth be told, it probably had been a lie even then, excuses because they dared not to imagine the consequences of it being something more.</p><p>They drank. They drank so, so much. They might have gotten short with rations (they already were at dangerous low levels, and the only reason they lasted so long was because they rationalized them), and the water filtering system on the ship they had gotten was far from the best, but they hadn’t spared on alcohol.</p><p>Since their ship stopped receiving SOS signals from Yggdrasil, they spent most of their time drunk. When they were drunk, they didn’t pay attention to the moving things. They could pretend they had escaped.</p><p>They lost track of time, so they didn’t know how long it took It to get stronger. Soon enough the intoxication wasn’t enough to shut the whisper, diluted the movements. The shadows made their presence clear to them with things that were not quite words nor noise, movements that weren’t quite there, calling Lyf to join them. Join It.</p><p>They couldn’t deny it anymore. It was there with them, The Bifrost, Yog-Sothoth, whatever It wanted to be called.</p><p>It’s not like they could do anything about it, they reasoned. Just. Ignore them.</p><p>It was easier when it was just the shadows. They turned on all lights, and installed some more. They avoided darkened points, and carried on as if nothing.</p><p>Which did not meant much, to be honest. There was not much Lyf could do, trapped in the small place, drifting on space, hoping to find some ship compassionate enough to pick them up, because it was their only hope. There was no planet that they could hope to get before dying, let it be of hunger or squamous things.</p><p>Cleaning. Sleeping. Ignore It. Writing. Reading. Ignore the shadows. They didn’t do much else.</p><p>Things got worse when they started to see the shadows on the light, too.</p><p>They weren’t the same, and in no way as bad. They would start small, just a bright point. It could be anything, Lyf always said to themself. A light being reflected on a shiny button or a piece of glass. And then it would start to spiral, first in small circles, and then getting bigger and bigger, until it almost took the whole room.</p><p>Lyf would avert their eyes as soon as they realized what was going on. They would turn back to their book, or bury their face on the pillow, or whatever it was they decided needed cleaning. They wouldn’t look up, even as it started to fill their peripheral vision, as it started to get in front of them, on whatever they had on hand, on themself and all that they were, filling them from inside out, covering them completely like a veil. It seemed to choke them, sometimes, and they knew they could get it out of them, could grab it and shove it far, far away, but they didn’t. They had the impression that if they tried to throw it away, they would also be taking something else with it, something so fundamentally basic to reality itself that it would make it all just bleed away.</p><p>They stood it. They could do that, they had to. They would close their eyes tight, very tight, and try to forget.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>There was a big, hairy cat that always roamed the surroundings of Lyf’s apartment’s building. It had no owner, and with good reason. In all the years Lyf had been conscious of its existence, the animal hadn’t done a thing besides being a bringer of chaos for themselves and all of their neighbors. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>It would hide behind pots and under banks, and wait until someone passed to attack at their ankles (Lyf had taken the habit of wearing sturdies boots after the first two weeks). If it saw any garbage bin, no matter how “complex” or “clever” the lock was, it would manage to get the bags out and rip them apart on the floor, never eating anything, but staying for a moment to admire its work.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>If you were carrying something delicate to your home, it would take advantage of your distraction to your surroundings, and run at full speed in between your legs, making you trip and break everything you were carrying. There was no dog brave enough on the area to confront it, and it always outclever the animal services.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lyf fed it. They always made sure to have some sort of leftovers that they could do nothing with, except leave them by the window before retreating, only to come back and find the plate empty. It would sometimes bring him a dead bird or some mouse in gratitude, but nothing more than that. It would still pretend not to know them on the hallways, and Lyf knew that they couldn’t go outside without a strong footwear.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Were their neighbors to find out, they would be more than mad. They didn’t care much, tough they didn’t know why. There was something that just made them feel better about watching the plate get emptied, knowing that the cat would be fine tomorrow, even if they hated it with all of their self.</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It became more of a normal thing, shutting it all out. The voice could be heard still, tough, the whispers coming from the thing that wrapped them completely. There was no escape from it.</p><p>They remembered, to not get lost on themself. They picked some random memory, something close to their heart and played it on their mind, pretending to be there.</p><p>Lyf spent more time inside their mind than outside of it. They moved less and less. If they felt hungry, they didn’t notice. Neither did thirst. There was a far worse thing pounding against them, reaching for a space that did not belong to it.</p><p>Eventually they got themself a blindfold. They would barely get it off, unless there was some serious matter that needed their addressing, which happened less and less often. It didn’t stop the shadows, and the things that came for them, but at least they wouldn’t see it coming. Like cloth you put on the head of an animal, they thought bitterly the first time. But at least the animal had no idea of what was coming.</p><p>They did. They knew, the same way they knew that there was no way of stopping it. So they laid in bed, eyes shut, waiting.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Lyfrassir Edda had a sister and a brother whose names they didn’t want to remember because it hurt too much. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Their sister was a beautiful woman who had followed her passion on the performance acts. She wasn’t a famous actress yet, they would joke, but she was a decent one, and for that had been elected for three years in a row to have the main role in a show the local theater would perform each year to celebrate the opening of a new season. Lyf wished they had gotten to see her.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Their brother was a clever man that had decided to dedicate himself to science, and had already a husband at his 24 years. His husband was a poet on the rise, and rumored to be the planet new hidden gem. Together, they had already filled the papers to perhaps one day be able to adopt a child of their own. They wished they had written that recommendation card for them.</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>There was movement, and noise, but there always was now, and so Lyf did not move.</p><p>They didn’t react to the voices calling them, either. Those were routine by now. What wasn’t normal were the things touching them, grabbing their arms, their shoulders, shaking them. It had never done that before.</p><p>It was time, then, Lyf thought. It was finally the day it would kill them for good. They had been expecting it for a long time, but it still awoke something inside of them, something older. It was fear of death, as natural as life itself, because even if Lyf welcomed it with open arms as the release of the infernal torture they had been living since they left Midgard, <em>they were fucking terrified.</em></p><p>They curled on theirself, body trembling completely as they kept getting touched, hands now on their head, and their eyes, and <em>they were taking the fucking blindfold of them now</em>. Of course they were. It couldn’t care less if Lyf lived or not, just what they could give it. It knew that if Lyf opened their eyes, saw it on its complete existence, they wouldn’t be able to hold any longer, they would do what it wanted, they would rip the universe apart just to get away from it.</p><p>The hands took the blindfold off, but they didn’t open their eyes, it couldn’t force them to do that. No matter how sweet its voice became, how tender the touch, they would not fall for it. They had already left their entire system to die by its hands, they would not allow it to do it to anywhere else.</p><p>More voices, more whispers and not-so-whispers filled their ears. They still didn’t move.</p><p>Then, they felt something stinging them on the neck (<em>why was it entering again it was already inside it could come whenever it wanted why was it doing it again</em>), and blackness overtook them.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Lyfrassir’s apartment was always clean, because the time they spent there was either focused on getting more work done, or maintaining the place. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>The kitchen was small, because they didn’t know how to cook much besides soup and some vegetables, on a god day. There was a small folding table for six with its chair, and had long since become their second office, stack of papers perfectly aligned on top of it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They probably didn’t spent much time on their bedroom as they should, but it was still there, almost empty except for the bed and some clothes on their wardrobe.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It was on their living room they spent more time sleeping than in the proper bed. The room wasn’t much bigger than the kitchen, but the sofas there they had bought with the place where comfortable, and it was where the TV was, so it was often used too. On one wall there was a bookcase, filled with books, some of them they had actually read. There was a particular stand full of magazines and pictures and all other things they should really throw to the garbage, but never got around to it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>There also was another thing there. A small box, full of small trinkets Lyf had acquired on their life. A book their sister gave them. A flattened stone they had made with their friends on one boring evening when they were all kids. A petal from the first flower they had been given.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>With time they opened it less and less, until they forgot completely of its existence, left to be coated on dust behind a portrait and some souvenir from a place they had never gone to.</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>They didn’t open their eyes when they woke up. That was a habit they had long since lost, used as they were to the blindfold on their head. It actually took them a moment to remember that they hadn’t it on anymore, It had snatched it from them, before they… passed out, fell asleep, they didn’t know or care, it was all the same at this point.</p><p>Another thing they had gotten used to were the voices, low and loud, but they still got surprised by the new ones. It had apparently decided to go back to stealing other people’s voices, but Lyf wasn’t going to fall for it again. They already knew how to ignore it, and that’s what they would do.</p><p>It wasn’t hard, all things considered. Sounds were easy to tune out.</p><p>Touch… was another different thing.</p><p>They had jumped when it touched them, before remembering that yes, this was a thing it could do now. It touched their shoulders, their hand, their head. They did their best to ignore it, but it felt so much like that which they craved. Lyf had to remind themself that no, that wasn’t von Raum, or la Cognizi, or Alexandria, just It playing with their hope of being found. Of seeing them again, because even if they knew or not what was going to happen to their system, they were the only ones that had gotten out alive beside them. They were sure of that.</p><p>But they couldn’t believe It, they repeated themself. They couldn’t open their eyes no matter how much the voices asked, <em>begged</em> them to. They couldn’t react. It would win if they did.</p><p>Even when It was so uncharacteristically gentle. When it would warn them of every touch before it moved, how it would carefully wet their lips with a glass of water (or what they assumed were water) and encouraged them to drink. How It would pray them to drink it, or else It would have to put an IV onto them.</p><p>Lyf allowed themself to break their vow of silence to laugh at that, a maniac thing that grew from their stomach and made them cry without stop, made their guts hurt, their hands hit inaccessibly every surface they touched (they weren’t in the same place than before. It was much softer than the cold floor they had been laying in), and didn’t stop until they went aphonic, and still then they kept at it for longer, cruel air wheezing coming from their throat.</p><p>That made It left them alone for a while.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>When Lyf had been a kid, they loved to cook. Well, not cooking, per se, but they loved what it entailed. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>It was their grandfather who taught them. They would put the radio on, and listen to the men on it talk while they gathered all the ingredients. Lyf hadn’t been allowed to do much, as their gran was a bit obsessed with getting the perfect dessert, cookie, or whatever it was they were making, but they had been happy to help nonetheless.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They would dig their fingers on the dough as they told him all about their day, who they had made friends with, an interesting bird they saw.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Their parents were surprised when they never really stopped cocking, not even after their grand had passed away.</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It kept its promise of connecting them into an IV, tough they still didn’t understand why the bother. It’s not like it was particularly annoying, and could be considered convenient, taking into account that at least they wouldn’t be feeling the effects of dehydration. Perhaps it wasn’t devised as some new form of torture, but just a way to keep them alive. It probably didn’t want them dead just yet, not before breaking them.</p><p>There were no tears left for that thought.</p><p>The next days went about the same as the ones before, just a mindless existence for the former inspector. Ignoring voices and petitions were easier now that they got used to the new ones.</p><p>Sometimes It would try to tempt them again with water or food to get them to opens their eyes (even when It told them that they could keep them shut if they wanted, but please accept <em>something</em>). But the only thing Lyf had left what their resolve, and they had promised themself to hold it for as long as they could, so It had a long way to go before getting anywhere.</p><p>One evening, when It came when a voice of their prisoners, It gave them something small to hold on their hands. They touched it, passing delicate fingers over it. Lyf knew they shouldn’t be entertaining It, but they were curious, and there were only so many memories one could go over before getting bored.</p><p>It was a small square, with a smooth texture that let them know about the setoffs below it. With a hunch about what it could be, they took it up to their face, and smelled it.</p><p>A sweet scent, mistletoe mixed with various flowers. Three purple flowers, to be specific. Bellflower, liatris and dwarf iris. They let out a gasp, and held the trinket to their chest.</p><p>It had been a dumb thing to do, something more proper of young teenagers who had been given a chaplet for the first time, but they had wanted to conserve it, so they had taken some petals and leaves, and took them to be laminated with resin to conserve it. It had been a long time since anyone had gifted them one, and the design was truly exquisite, they had been surprised that someone would make something so beautiful for them. Even if they never got to meet the person, it still meant a lot to them.</p><p>Packing it with their things had been more of an impulsive decision, but they were glad they had done so.</p><p>Why was It giving it to them? Just to take it away? They didn’t want that, they needed it. It was the first thing they held from home in so long… They curled protectively around it.</p><p>It didn’t take it from them, instead choosing to pat their back in slow lines, up and down their spine. Lyf wanted to say they didn’t relax unto the touch.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>There was an exercise Lyf therapist had given them when they started feeling stressed about their job. In a diary, they were supposed to write the first thing that came into mind. Then, the second, and so on until they were writing without thinking. They were to fill at least two pages on a bad day, tough they spaced out so much those days that they would keep going until without realizing they had gone on for double of that.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>With a highlighter, they would then mar all the emotions or words related to one, and analyses the ones surrounding it. It was supposed to help with their emotional intelligence, whatever that was. They didn’t care much about that, they just wanted their therapist to be happy and give them the green light to do more than paperwork, and so they had done a mediocre effort.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They wondered what they would get out from the writing were they to do the exercise now.</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It had fallen asleep on the bed next to them.</p><p>Lyf couldn’t take it anymore. It sounded so much like him… they were starting to doubt.</p><p>Maybe it was him, they told themself in a small, hopeful voice. They must have survived, after all. And those last days, they had been too nice to be anything from It. Just, maybe…</p><p>And opening their eyes, just for a second, it couldn’t be that bad, they reasoned. It had taken them a whole hour of looking at a shadow before It starting manifesting, and still then they could control it. Probably.</p><p>The blindfold had been for their own comfort, after all.</p><p>Lyf took a deep breath, and opened their eyes.</p><p>It was Marius. Just Marius. Not some shadowy version, not some cheap imitation, it was their Marius sleeping next to them, sat in a chair with his head resting on the bed. He looked… tired, with black circles under his eyes and a half shaved barb growing horribly on his face, and his curls were all disheveled. They raised an arm to preen it.</p><p>That’s when they noticed it. They had an audience.</p><p>They didn’t know where they were, but it had walls, a lot of them, and on every single one, on all dark corners, there were shadows, spiraling and hovering and watching at them with a mocking, sadistic laugh, rolling over itselves.</p><p>And there, in the center of all, a small dot. The smallest you could ever hope to imagine, a white star that seemed to reflect the look on their eyes, and on it Lyf saw everything.</p><p>It was the infinite, the cosmos itself. It was an orb and on its center was everywhere, and on its circumference nothing. An endless count of things, of objects, of actions. In these were the worst acts committed, all of them paled to the fact that they occupied the same space, without overlapping. It was the most beautiful object ever created, and the ugliest one. It was all points of the universe, it was seas and rain and stars and earth and suns.</p><p>On it Lyf saw the dust of a thousand of moons, a spider web trapped inside a glass jar, its owner long since dead. They saw eyes hiding away from them, and others watching intensely, awaiting for their next action; a mirror which reflected nothing and iron of a thousand of colors, all of them black and white; snow, forest, a desert that seemed unending on its extension, and all and very single of its sand grains. Every letter ever spoken, and later written. Lyf saw ice that reflected a thousand of squamous things, and the place from where the shadows came.</p><p>They saw a hand stretching, and another one holding it, none of those theirs, but feeling like they owned them in some way. Armies and ships. A tunnel. The key and the gate. And It, smiling a smile full of so many teeth.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>They had once won a poetry competition in high school.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It had technically been obligatory, but those who didn’t like poetry just put in the box a white sheet, or a one liner.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Lyf had read some poetry by then, and was interested on the idea. The day they had been told about the task, five days before, they had spent all of their free time alone in their room, writing drafts and drafts of the same idea, practicing and taking notes of those details they accidentally made but ended up loving.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They saw videos and videos of theory, and read analysis that were perhaps a little too much for their level, but they tried nonetheless to understand them. Finally, they got it. The perfect poem.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It had been something about the bird their gran had on the kitchen, because their favorite poetry always had some bird or two entwined in the narration. They talked on it about how it would always look at both of them cooking, and how sometimes it would get to eat some of the food with them. How it hated the guy on the radio, a very specific guy that sometimes helped on the program it was tuned to, and would start screaming every time it heard his voice. How it would tolerate modern music, but would sing along to any violin that happened to sound from the small gadget.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The teacher had made them walk to the front of the class to get their bag of candy and a plastic medal. Their classmates couldn’t care less, and the teacher’s happiness had a weird artificial flavor, but they couldn’t have been prouder of themself, and spent the rest of the day smiling, medal dangling on their chest.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Their parents had invited the whole family to dinner, and made them read their work aloud. Later, they framed the paper, and they decided to gift it to their grandfather. </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Lyf couldn’t see anything, and they preferred it that way now. They knew it was still there, waiting for the next time they felt comfortable enough to try again.</p><p>They wanted to believe that it would be never.</p><p>There was some- someone, Marius, he was holding them. Of course it was him. He had on his stupid coat, and they could feel the metal arm digging into their back.</p><p>He was holding them, whispering things into their ears. Lyf was trembling. They did not want to think of why they were doing so, they didn’t want to remember. They knew that it was still there, even if he gauged their eyes, the star, the orb, the It would be waiting for them in that corner of their memory, for when they felt like pressing into it.</p><p>They weren’t going to do that. They couldn’t.</p><p>They held on Marius, hoping that it would fade with time.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Lyf had loved playing the cello, a long time ago. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Their uncle had gifted them the instrument, and payed for the classes. It was… a weird present for a kid, but they enjoyed it nonetheless.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>One thing they had decided early on was that they wouldn’t take part in competitions. Recitals, yes, but nothing were they had to prove themself better than the others. They had just gone over a period of perfectionism with their poetry, which ended up almost making them ditch the hobby.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>So they played with friends they made on practices, for their school; for familiar reunions, and for the bird of their gran, that apparently loved the sound almost as much as any good violin, but had also became a part time professor, as it would go crazy whenever they made a wrong note.</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The shadows faded with time. The voices (the ones that they were sure now weren’t real) also disappeared, and now they sometimes felt safe enough to wander in the ship with their eyes open.</p><p>After the… incident, Lyf started to accept little by little the things they were sure were real. Marius had been their first, with a close tie to Ivy and Raph. The rest of the crew took them more time, but Marius said that it was fine, expected even. They couldn’t just start trusting their senses completely after everything.</p><p>They were staying on the ship, with no plan of leaving yet. The crew had assured them that they were welcomed, and Raph spent a good deal of her time trying to find out exactly how much had Lyf changed. So far, she found some accelerated healing, changes to their bone structure, differences on the way their melanin behaved.</p><p>There was another thing they noticed but refused to say, for fear that it would end up being contagious.</p><p>The orb, the star, whatever that had been… it was still there, in the back of their mind. They could feel it calling to them, showing them things sometimes that they hadn’t asked for. An Aleph, they learned it had been called some time ago, the first letter of the sacred texts. It lingered there because they still remembered it, and doubted they could be able to forget.</p><p>But some days they managed to ignore it, and it would just be another quiet evening (or as quiet as it could get in the Aurora). Some days, they helped Marius cook, and prevented him from burning everything. Some days, Raph would invite them to take part in experiment that did not necessary needed their presence, but seemed to add a positive factor, in her words. Some days, Ivy would invite them to her library, and they would help her organize her collection, and perhaps enjoy a book or two.</p><p>There would latter come days were they would enjoy a match of cards with Ashes and Jonny, or help Nastya repair the Aurora, or allow Brian to introduce them to the mechanical spiders on the bridge. Even further but equally achievable were the days when they would learn from Tim the proper way to take care of a gun, or have a tea party with the Toy Soldier.</p><p>There will never come the day when Lyf forgets about the Aleph, or that orb left the back of their minds. But it would be fine.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I am sorry if it didnt made much sense, but. It was six in the morning when i finished it. I do not regret it.</p><p>So, the orb, the Aleph thing is based on a short story by Borges, called "The Aleph". Its a good story, and if that things interest you you might want to take a look at it.</p><p>Kudos and comments more than welcomed, in fact apreciated as the feeling of finilly finishing That Thing, and getting to go to bed and fall asleep.</p><p>EDIT: so, I've written what could be called a companion fic, called "a nice moment", where Lyf and Marius chill and talk about the flower crown mentioned in one memory, if you'd be interested in that</p></blockquote></div></div>
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